Letters

By Cathy Linh Che

Dear Jane:

A heart locket, on a snapped

string, a cuff with three

turquoise stones, a bracelet,

nearly a snake, the ends

not quite meeting. When

you opened the pendant,

whose photo was inside?

You were found two and

a half months after my

birth, perhaps, you had

a baby, perhaps you had

high cheekbones, just

like my mother. Did you

walk through the snow

in the woods of Anchorage?

Dear Jane, I don’t know

if you like that name.

Dear Cathy:

No, I don’t like that name.

It’s not mine. It belongs to

the snow. I’d rather be a woman

watching the clouds

shapeshift into the dreams

of anything I wanted to be.

I wanted to be a heart.

Now, I’m a cloud. Some days,

I like it up here. Some days,

I like dropping to the earth,

and smelling the trees.

Some days, I wonder what

it would be like to be alive

with the fires of every day.

Hope you don’t feel bad for

me. Kiss your mother

for me. Thanks for the poem.

I like being a cloud in a poem.